Longtime college football coach Bobby Elliott died at the age of 64 on Sunday after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Elliott played for Iowa from 1972-75, earning academic All-American status in two of those seasons, and began a coaching career as graduate assistant for the Hawkeyes in 1976. He most recently served as an assistant at Nebraska.

After various stops around the country, Elliott would spend 13 years with Iowa beginning in 1987, reaching the position of assistant head coach in 1998. Sadly, he would be diagnosed with blood cancer and battle that disease for the remainder of his life.

"His coaching of football players was everything that is good about college athletics. He taught them to be adults," former Iowa athletic director and current Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said to Mark Emmert of the Des Moines Register. "He taught them to be people of academic achievement as well as high athletic achievement."